ruthan wrote on 2021-03-17, 09:47:

@kjliew - I know you have to add your Qemu 3D advertising to every thread..

You just love to rant for non-sense. Who's ever going to update a dead, EOL last decade OSes such as Win98/ME/2K/XP? Well, if one insists on playing native for 20+ years old, unsupported games, then that is just one's own trouble creation.

Well, I didn't say it but you said it out for me 😁

Backward compatibility is a torn debate. At one end, it helps retain the existing customer base but on the other it also hinders innovation and creates dinosaurs that won't survive "Strategic Inflation Point" (SIP), a term coined by the late Intel CEO's and Chairman Andrew Grove. This is Stanford Business Management 101 for entrepreneurship in modern era. Retaining existing customer base pales in comparison to Growth and Innovation is the key to bring Growth. The ideal of keeping backward compatibility while continuing Innovation seems too good to be true, as with most aspects of lives. The "Fruit" company is a good example. No investors or businesses would like to see stagnant in progress. That is also true for personal finance, inflation will eventually wipe out a stagnant portfolio.

Microsoft has done more than enough, they literally gave up on that and happily gave away everyone a legitimate copy of Windows XP to use in VM. 😀 Now, one can use that same copy of Windows XP **CENSORED** to play games. 🤣

ruthan wrote on 2021-03-17, 12:26:

In my view MS could still provide some old version of library for backwards compatibility -there are already some DirectX libab […]
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In my view MS could still provide some old version of library for backwards compatibility -there are already some DirectX libabry versions(d3dx9_25,d3dx9_27 etc.. in standard package ) , i know that it cost money, but who else have more of them, than they.. It backward compatibility would be provided through some wrapper, or it could be.. but it could be developed by MS itself, when that incompatible change is made.. not later by community reverse engineering. Same with Dos compatibility layer, with XP / Win2000 MS could provide "own Dosbox" .. and Dosbox developers could actually made something else, some other great retro gaming tool.

I overall i thing that MS could make better job in lots of areas and they have resources for it. For example Win 10 updates should be priority.. and on my machines, so some reason it keeps trying installing some Vista upgrade (Visual Studio 2005 Services pack 1 update for Windows Vista) and it fails for 5 years with every update cycle.. i dont have VS 2005 installed is probably some wrong detection script.. because of some VS runtime registry key leftover , other users have same problem, every time when someone open some MS forum thread about it, you get generic update anything else and other hints... ask for some logs, you give them it.. and later no action and thread is closed.

Similar thing would is Windows 10 upgrade - i for example had to temporary delete or hide mi Linux, MacOS partition, because there is some all disc incompatible with next upgrade application scanning, is failing on other filesystems and upgrade is canceled.

They quite ignored PC gaming for long time and mainly cared about Xbox, made such failed project like Games for Windows Live API, DX10, which would kill other companies, but because their strong position they could afford that, same as Windows 10 UWP platform, which is very user unfriendly. How mad they were, was shown when they launched Win8 - tablet edition for everyone, or original Xbone online only with Kinect - TV watching box + some gaming.

For the first para, yes it's possible to make different versions of DX but they may not be much willing to modify other compatibility other compatibility things. They may need to set redirects from the d3dim.dll file if they make different versions of the same D3D. Since the community is fixing things by themselves they don't look into it.

For second para, I believe Visual Studio 2005 is required by programs of that era regardless of the OS. Just like you need Visual C++ 2005 in Windows 10, I believe it's like that. I don't know why if says Windows Vista but it may again be something for Windows Vista only applications. Also the reason its failing because the latest version might already be installed and the Update is failing to detect it.

For your 3rd and 4th paragrapghs, I don't have any more arguement. Microsoft can work on their partition manager. Also they should take slow steps and not follow the UWP path.

ZellSF wrote on 2021-03-17, 16:46:

It does not. Your display driver might, however. […]
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Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2021-03-17, 04:45:

unlike the original Microsoft DirecX which stretches it to 16:9.

It does not. Your display driver might, however.

The GOG scaler also has several options:
https://www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_keeper_seri … _extra_settings
I see no reason to use it over dgVoodoo though.

I completely forgot about that. I set to stretch through the monitor settings, which suprisingly works well than to force through any wrapper at 16:9 resolutions. Surely the image becomes blurrier with the monitor setting but it doesn't make the picture blocky.

Microsoft has done more than enough, they literally gave up on that and happily gave away everyone a legitimate copy of Windows XP to use in VM.

It was true to higher versions of Win 7, its feature is no more available in Win10 and using it with anything else than Virtual PC, is not legal, or is at least some grey area, so bigger IT webs wrote nothing about using XP mode license for Virtual box, Qemu, Vmware..
MS could probably make something like Amigas WHDload and let people make some configurations DB to download, they are doing some similar on their own such Xbox backwards compatibility as key feature of their consoles.

Dunno, you could be right. I never bothered to read the EULA (who ever did? 🤣) if one could use it outside of the bundled VirtualPC. I still have the genuine WindowsXPMode download from Windows Update from my Windows 7 days in archive. It contains a full image of pre-installed Windows XP with SPs.

I had time to play Gog version game, its still good game, i found some other problems:
- except some crashes on starting logos, game run without crashes, which are mentioned by other people through game history, but i missing 15b something got wrong.. maybe because its big map.. a also marked maximum number of squares for harvest and build and lot of building.. after i completed mission and press ESC to continue playing.. but after while, when i tried to sold some captured building, i got game crashes.. was able to continue to play through loading saves, few times, after some final crash.. from which i wasnt able to load my saves (load screen crash). Game has nasty practice, that Quick save is not mentioned in main menu and its available only after is some other save loaded.. by hot key.
- so i had to start next level through game starting line: "..DKII-DX.exe" -level level16
- In mission 16, other big map, i met problem is wasnt able at the end, build rooms through rectangle gesture, but only through click by individual squares and it worked only sometimes, so its not 1 level problem, probably something with big maps, or lots of used squares
- what is good a had not any performance problems, game is was known for them.. I remember when i played in on K6-2 and Geforce 2 MX, it was slideshow, in map when lots vampires attacks and when i build lots of canons to kill them..
- there small text rendering bug, black horizontal line through scrolling white text.. also at at least without dgVoodoo there is some noice under mana numbers in HUD
- i tried unofficial 1.73 to fix saves loading, but it not solution
- there was mentioned broken AI, im not sure what it exactly means, but monsters are often constantly complaining that they have not food, money, lair even when lots of resources is around them, im not using doors and wall, when i dont have to, so pathfinding should not have problems.. even AI in Dungeon Keeper 1 was better for this, maybe this is that AI bug.
- i somehow broke Menu rendering - now it looks very pixelated.. when i applied 1.7.3 patch, i made whole game folder backed, delete updated folder - because it was not help for my broken saves, restored backup and it something broke.. Now i dont see in graphics menu that Gog HW patch, but dgVoodoo .. in game is still ok. I tried to restore original patch.dll it made menu again ok, but dgVoodoo so not working - of course, when i returned ddraw.dll renamed to patch.dll, it is again broken. I dunno what exactly changed and why now is dgVoodoo as render. Maybe patch changed some ini file in Users folder, or something in registry.

I can't understand half of what you wrote, but it sounds like you're forcing MSAA or texture filtering when using dgVoodoo; don't: force a higher resolution if you want antialiasing.

Problem is not dgVoodoo setting, its used device / wrapper.. in game is now dgVoodoo device instead of Gog HW patch and its breaking menu rendering(looks like SW one), rest of game is fine.

Here is sample that that text rendering black lines strikethrough some text:

No, that's a rendering error you get in dgVoodoo only if you force texture filtering or MSAA. Here's how dgVoodoo should look (well ideally you should apply SSAA, but not relevant for this):

If you think you aren't forcing texture filtering or MSAA, check that both Dungeon Keeper 2 and dgVoodooCpl.exe is running under the same compatibility mode; they may be using different configuration files.

Yeah i have enabled Texturing filtering - 16x and Antialiasing (MSSA) and , 8x + 1920x1440 to make it look better. Its is working fine all other graphics, how it can add some additional black lines?

There is picture of menu rendering problem, it was fine when in menu was listed Gog patch.. but still dgVoodoo was active, i dunno why is now listed dgVoodoo device instead Gog HW patch, before it worked somehow together. Vogons upload applies so png compression to make it looks worse that it actually is.

ruthan wrote on 2021-03-24, 20:57:

Yeah i have enabled Texturing filtering - 16x and Antialiasing (MSSA) and , 8x + 1920x1440 to make it look better. Its is working fine all other graphics, how it can add some additional black lines?

Dungeon Keeper 2 doesn't support AF, or MSAA, by forcing them you create problems.

1) You shouldn't be forcing resolution to specific values. It will look bad. Use integer values (2x / 3x / 4x)
2) If you have a decent PC you should disable MSAA and use higher integer values for resolution instead (you can write any value, up to 16K width/height).

Optimally you should get this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQul3s9LLzI

Your imps are lazy. Slap 'em! 😉

1) You shouldn't be forcing resolution to specific values. It will look bad. Use integer values (2x / 3x / 4x)

Ok, i never used this way. When try its working, but now is picture 16:9, it looks stretched, but im not sure.. its possible use 2x/3x/4x etc.. and still keep 4:3 aspect ratio?

Update: I found it its in first tab.